Fluency Norms Chart

Jan Hasbrouck and Gerald Tindal have completed an extensive study of oral reading fluency. The results of their study were published in a technical report entitled, "Oral Reading Fluency: 90 Years of Measurement," which is available in The Reading Teacher in 2006 (Hasbrouck, J. & Tindal, G. A. (2006). Oral reading fluency norms: A valuable assessment tool for reading teachers. The Reading Teacher. 59(7), 636-644.).

The table below shows the mean oral reading fluency of students in grades 1 through 8 as determined by Hasbrouck and Tindal's data.

You can use the information in this table to draw conclusions and make decisions about the oral reading fluency of your students. Students scoring 10 or more words below the 50th percentile using the average score of two unpracticed readings from grade-level materials need a fluency-building program. In addition, teachers can use the table to set the long-term fluency goals for their struggling readers.

Average weekly improvement is the average words per week growth you can expect from a student. It was calculated by subtracting the fall score from the spring score and dividing the difference by 32, the typical number of weeks between the fall and spring assessments. For grade 1, since there is no fall assessment, the average weekly improvement was calculated by subtracting the winter score from the spring score and dividing the difference by 16, the typical number of weeks between the winter and spring assessments.

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Comments

I am interested in using your chart for my learners. However, there is little information on howv it is used. For instance, how do you account for the fact that the score of a learner remains unchanged (the percentile) as the learner's number of correct words read in a minute over terms improves ?